StocktonPAC presents ODC/Dance - Dance Company Residency on October 9th

Published by New Jersey Stage
originally published: 09/23/2026

Photo by Lydia Daniller

(GALLOWAY, NJ) -- The Dance Program at Stockton University will host ODC/Dance Company and Artistic Director Brenda Way from October 1-9 for the university’s annual Dance Company Residency. The residency concludes with a performance by ODC/Dance - Dance Company Residency on Friday, October 9, 2026 at 7:30pm.

ODC/Dance Company consists of 10 world-class dancers who perform its imaginative repertory for more than 50,000 people annually. In addition to two annual home seasons in San Francisco (“Dance Downtown” and its holiday production “The Velveteen Rabbit”), recent highlights include appearances at the Brooklyn Academy of Music Next Wave Festival in New York, the MODAFE Festival in Seoul Korea and past standing-room-only engagements in Europe, Russia and Asia. Way’s work was selected by Brooklyn Academy of Music for the inaugural Dancemotion Tour in 2010.

For this return performance to Stockton, the company will bring a pair of Way’s masterworks, including “Investigating Grace,” named an American Masterpiece by the National Endowment for the Arts in 2010 and Way's more recent “Collision, Collapse and a Coda,” named a "mini-masterpiece" by the San Francisco Chronicle.

The Dance Company Residency, now in its twelfth year, engages Stockton students and the surrounding community. Through classes for dance students, general studies students, and the public, the artists-in-residence teach movement and share their experiences as working artists. The residency culminates in a performance by ODC at Stockton's Performing Arts Center on Friday, October 9, at 7:30pm. Tickets are available for purchase online. Stockton Performing Arts Center is located at 101 Vera King Farris Drive in Galloway, New Jersey.

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Founded in 1971 by Artistic Director Brenda Way, who trained under the legendary George Balanchine, ODC originated as Oberlin Dance Collective—named after Oberlin College in Ohio where Brenda was on faculty. Brenda's goal was to ground the company in a dynamic, pluralistic, urban setting.

Known nationally for entrepreneurial savvy, ODC was the first modern dance company in the United States to own its home facility, the ODC Theater, built in 1979 and expanded in 2010. In September 2005, ODC opened the ODC Dance Commons, which houses ODC/Dance, ODC School, administrative offices, and the Healthy Dancers' Clinic. In 2022, in an audacious response to the fragile arts landscape, ODC seized the opportunity to acquire the 14,400 square foot building adjacent to ODC Theater. This allows them to open their arms to expand their capacity to house, nurture and promote the artists and the art making that give the Bay Area its distinctive flair.

The Dance Company Residency is sponsored by the School of Arts and Humanities. Through this residency, world-renowned artists teach classes and work with Stockton students and the surrounding community. Way, along with members from ODC/Dance, will stage a new dance work with select performers from the Stockton Dance Company to premiere in the Spring Dance Concert from Feb. 25-27, 2027, in the Stockton Performing Arts Center.

Stockton University is ranked among the top public universities in the nation. Our nearly 9,000 students can choose to live and learn on the 1,600-acre wooded main campus in the Pinelands National Reserve in South Jersey and at our coastal residential campus just steps from the beach and Boardwalk in Atlantic City. The university offers more than 160 undergraduate and graduate programs.